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Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 09:17:21 -0500
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Subject: Radio Havana Cuba-01 February 2002
Radio Havana Cuba-01 February 2002
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 01 Febuary 2002
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*NOBEL LAUREATES TO ATTEND ECONOMISTS' CONFERENCE IN HAVANA THIS MONTH
*WTO RULES AGAINST US IN HAVANA CLUB TRADEMARK DISPUTE
*CASA DE LAS AMERICAS LITERARY PRIZES ANNOUNCED
*HAVANA TO HOST CUBA'S FIRST INTERNATIONAL REGGAE CONCERT
*BRITAIN TO FUND FOUR DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN CUBA
*WORLD SOCIAL FORUM OPENS IN PORTO ALEGRE WITH MASSIVE PEACE MARCH
*NORTH KOREA FIRES BACK AT BUSH, CALLING SPEECH A THREAT TO WORLD PEACE
*THOUSANDS ON VERGE OF DEATH IN AFGHAN PRISON
*ARGENTINE DICTATORSHIP'S AGENT RELEASED FROM HOUSE ARREST
*CHILD SMUGGLING RING UNCOVERED IN MEXICO
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*NOBEL LAUREATES TO ATTEND ECONOMISTS' CONFERENCE IN HAVANA THIS MONTH
Havana, February 1 (RHC)-- Four Nobel Prize winners will give masters
conferences during the IV Economist's Meeting on Globalization and
Problems of Development, which will be held in Havana from February
11th through the 15th.
Nobel Laureates for the last three years, Robert Mundel, James
Heckman and Joseph Stiglitz will participate in the conference along
with Nobel Peace prizewinner, Adolfo Perez Esquivel and some 400
researchers, academicians and professionals from around the world.
The organizing committee reports that 160 papers from 37 countries
have been received. Esther Aguilera, vice president of Cuba's
Association of Economists and Accountants, which is sponsoring the
meeting along with the Latin American and Caribbean Association of
Economists, announced that World Bank Vice President, Guillermo
Perry, and International Monetary Fund official, Claudio Loser would
also participate in the five-day gathering.
The Inter-American Development Bank, the World Trade Organization,
the International Work Organization and the Pan-American Health
Organization will also represented.
Aquilera told reporters in the Cuban capital that the meeting is
unique in the varied schools of thought that will be represented, all
concerned about finding solutions to today's pressing problems.
The Cuban economist said that in addition to conferences, the meeting
would feature round table discussions focusing on the first economic
crisis of the millennium, the consequences of the events of September
11 in the United States, the Argentina situation and the Free Trade
Area of the Americas.
Cuba began hosting economists' meetings on Globalization and the
Problems of Development in l999.
*WTO RULES AGAINST US IN HAVANA CLUB TRADEMARK DISPUTE
Geneva, February 1 (RHC)-- The World Trade Organization has
officially adopted the ruling of its Appellate Body report on the
Havana Club trademark dispute between the United States and the
European Union.
The U.S. company Bacardi is illegally using the trademark, arguing
that it was confiscated after the 1959 victory of the Cuban
Revolution. Havana Club -- jointly owned by Havana Rum and Liquors
and the French company Pernod Ricard -- contends that the United
States is violating the basic principles of the World Trade
Organization.
The announcement of the decision was made on Friday by the WTO's
Dispute Settlement Body. According to the report, the WTO adopted the
appeals decision on the U.S. implementation in the foreign sales
corporation dispute with the European Union.
In Washington, the U.S. government said they respected their
obligation to comply with WTO rules and were working with the EC to
resolve the dispute.
*CASA DE LAS AMERICAS LITERARY PRIZES ANNOUNCED
Havana, February 1 (RHC)-- Writers from Argentina, Spain, Cuba and
Guyana are the winners of Latin America's coveted Casa de las
Americas literary awards for 2002. It was announced on Thursday night
at the cultural institution's headquarters in Havana that the novel
"Plop" by Argentine Rafael Pinedo, had won Casa's top prize. The
jury said the work was as "strange as it was disconcerting."
The first prize for Latin American poetry went to Cuban Luis Manuel
Perez Boitel for his "Aun nos pretenece el ontono" or Autumn still
belongs to us. Spain was the winner in the best essay category, with
"The impure love of cities: Notes on modernist literature and urban
space" by Alvaro Salvador Jofre.
Argentine Carlos Marianidis won the best children's literature award
with his novel, "Nada detiene a las golondrinas" or Nothing stops the
swallows.
And the Casa de las Americas prize for best Caribbean English
language work was awarded to Guyanese, Oonya Kempadoo, for his novel
"Tide Running."
For the second time honorary awards were made, and this time among
the winners was late Cuban author Jose Lezama Lima for poetry.
Thursday evening's closing ceremony ended the 43rd Casa de las
Americas literary awards that were chosen from among 740 works from
28 countries and were presided over by Colombian Culture Minister,
Aracelys Morales Lopez and her Cuban counterpart, Abel Prieto.
*HAVANA TO HOST CUBA'S FIRST INTERNATIONAL REGGAE CONCERT
Havana, February 1 (RHC)-- Cuba is preparing to hold its first
international Reggae Festival on the 5th and 6th of this month.
Jamaican Reggae musician, Teddy Josiah Kinlock, told reporters in
Havana that the concerts are a homage to the late Reggae star, Bob
Marley in celebration of his birthday. Marley, an internationally
venerated Reggae performer and songwriter, died of cancer in 1981 at
the age of 36.
Josiah, who lives in Canada and who has worked with musicians like Ry
Cooder, George Harrison and the Rolling Stones, will share the stage
in Havana with fellow Jamaican Debby Young and the Cuban groups,
Manana Reggae, Onda Expansiva, Gente de Zona and Punto Rojo, which is
made up of musicians from Cuba and Martinque.
The concert, which will be repeated in the eastern city of Santiago,
is a project of Havana's Metropolitan Park.
*BRITAIN TO FUND FOUR DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN CUBA
Havana, February 1 (RHC)-- Cuban senior citizens will soon enjoy a
new physical therapy center thanks to a Cuban-British cooperation
project. The two countries have signed an agreement to work together
on four new development projects in the framework of the British
Cooperation Fund-Small Grants Scheme, which was established in Cuba
in 1995.
Among the projects is a physical therapy center to be constructed in
a senior center located in the Belen Convent, in the capital's Old
Havana colonial section.
*WORLD SOCIAL FORUM OPENS IN PORTO ALEGRE WITH MASSIVE PEACE MARCH
Porto Alegre, February 1 (RHC)-- Representing a broad range of social
movements worldwide, tens of thousands of activists opened the Second
World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil with a massive peace
march. Local police estimated as many as 30,000 people joined the
march, slightly smaller than the 40,000 people expected by
organizers.
The six-day conference will feature 700 workshops, 100 seminars and
28 plenary assemblies. More than 13,000 delegates from 150 countries
are gathered for the World Social Forum, which is taking place at the
sprawling complex of the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul.
The Forum in Brazil is taking place at the same time that the World
Economic Forum is being held in New York City. According to Brazilian
Worker's Party leader Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva, the meeting in New
York is characterized by exclusion and only the rich and famous need
apply. By contrast, the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre is marked
by plurality and openness. Da Silva said that participants at the
Forum in Brazil will discuss how humans can live with dignity, not
how much money they can make.
Among session topics at the Brazilian forum are the problems of Third
World debt, corporate taxation, cultural diversity, water as a public
commodity, food security and the role of women in globalization. The
conference runs through Tuesday, the 5th.
In other news, 300 homeless families occupied a 14-story abandoned
building owned by Sul American Insurance in downtown Porto Alegre on
Thursday. Juliana Gonzales, director of the National Movement for the
Struggle for Housing, said they wanted to protest the lack of urban
reform and a public policy on housing in Brazil.
*NORTH KOREA FIRES BACK AT BUSH, CALLING SPEECH A THREAT TO WORLD PEACE
Pyongyang, February 1 (RHC)-- North Korea has hit back at U.S.
President George W. Bush's State of the Union address, saying it was
close to "declaring war."
In his address Tuesday before Congress and the world, Bush labeled
North Korea -- along with Iraq and Iran -- as an "axis of evil." He
said the three countries and their "terrorist allies" were actively
seeking weapons of mass destruction, warning that they could find
themselves targets of Washington's wrath if they didn't behave
themselves.
In the first official reaction to Bush's speech, a foreign ministry
spokesman in Pyongyang said that North Korea was watching what it
called "the disturbing moves of the United States that has pushed the
situation to the brink of war."
North Korea also revealed that U.S. reconnaissance planes had carried
out spy flights over the country during recent weeks, gathering
information for a possible attack. Pyongyang condemned Washington's
"open disclosure of its intention to attack the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea" and said it was justified in arming itself for its
own defense.
In South Korea, where the government of President Kim Dae-Jung has
pinned its hopes on improving relations between the North and South,
Bush's State of the Union address has heightened anxiety. The South
Korean Foreign Ministry said that increased tensions between the two
countries "could bring about unexpected, unhappy results."
*THOUSANDS ON VERGE OF DEATH IN AFGHAN PRISON
Kabul, February 1 (RHC)-- The lives of several thousand former
Taliban fighters who are being held at a prison in northern
Afghanistan are in danger due to severe overcrowding, lack of
sanitation, inadequate food, and exposure to winter cold and
infection. According to a human rights group, Physicians for Human
Rights (PHR), the U.S. military, which controlled access to the
prison until mid-January, should provide supplies and equipment
necessary to ensure the health of the more than 3000 men who are held
at the prison.
Jennifer Leaning, a PHR board member who visited the Shebarghan
Prison near the northern provincial capital of Mazar-I-Sharif, told
reporters that the situation was "a quiet atrocity." She said that
the prison warden told her that many prisoners had already died at
the facility, primarily from dysentery and pneumonia. Leaning said
that the United States "cannot wash its hands of responsibility for
prisoners whose fate from the start it has been in a position to
influence or determine."
Leonard Rubenstein, the Director of Physicians for Human Rights, said
there are thousands are dying in Shebarghan and that more will die if
Washington does not take action to stop it. He added that the
prisoners are worthy of the full force of protections provided by the
Geneva Conventions -- including adequate nutrition, sanitation and
health care.
According to reports from the prison, inmates are divided into three
cell-blocks, with about 1000 held in each block. Individual cells,
which were built to house ten to fifteen prisoners each, currently
hold more than 80. Food, according to the report, was "insufficient
in quantity and nutrition, the water supply unclean, sanitation
virtually absent, clothing meager, and barred walls open to the
elements expose the inhabitants to winter conditions. Disease is
rampant."
The Physicians for Human Rights report stated that there was evidence
of deliberate abuse or torture at the prison -- emphasizing that the
U.S. military was well aware of the conditions at the prison, because
they had controlled access to it until they left the area on January
14th.
The director of the human rights group said that aside from its legal
responsibility as a party in the war that led to the capture of the
prisoners, Washington has a moral responsibility to provide
assistance. He concluded that those who have custody of the prisoners
have no capacity to meet their needs, while "the United States has
that capacity."
*ARGENTINE DICTATORSHIP'S AGENT RELEASED FROM HOUSE ARREST
Buenos Aires, February 1 (RHC)-- Retired Argentine Navy Captain
Alfredo Astiz has been released after the government in Buenos Aires
rejected an extradition request from a Swedish court accusing him of
human rights violations.
Astiz was released after being held for 32 days at the Mar del Plata
Naval Base, located some 250 miles south of Buenos Aires. He is
charged in Sweden with the January 1977 disappearance of Dagmar
Hagelin, a 17-year-old Swedish girl living in Buenos Aires during the
country's military dictatorship.
Alfredo Astiz, dubbed "the Blond Angel of Death" by victims of the
repression, faces international arrest warrants in France, Spain and
Italy -- which means he could be arrested if he leaves Argentina.
Active and retired military personnel involved in human rights
violations are immune from criminal prosecution in Argentina under
amnesty laws signed by former president Carlos Menem.
*CHILD SMUGGLING RING UNCOVERED IN MEXICO
Mexico City, February 1 (RHC)-- Mexican police have announced that
they uncovered a ring that was smuggling children from Central
America to the United States. The Federal Police said it had freed
six Salvadoran infants from "deplorable conditions" at a house in
Naucalpan, a suburb of Mexico City, and had arrested three people.
According to authorities in the United States, two other suspects
from the same child smuggling gang were arrested in Los Angeles, and
authorities took six children found with them into protective
custody.
Mexican authorities said they believe "a significant number of
children may have already been sent to the United States." Police are
investigating the possibility the children were destined for
adoption-for-money, child prostitution or organ trafficking.
(c) 2002 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved.
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